Polly’s creations go live on CBS this week

So you wanted a June wedding, but it’s the middle of June — what to do? For one lucky couple, the answer was to be chosen for The Early Show’s “Wedding in a Week,” which began airing Monday on CBS.

And as part of that prize, the couple will have their wedding cake designed and baked by Hood River’s own Polly Schoonmaker and Lindsay Gott of Polly’s Cakes.

Each day this week the show is focusing on one aspect of the wedding: wardrobe, flowers, decor, cakes and rings, with the wedding on Friday. On Thursday’s show, filmed live in New York, the future bride and groom will be faced with the difficult task of choosing between Polly’s creations.

“I’ll be giving them a variety of choices,” Schoonmaker said last week. “Everything from whimsical to classic, square and slices — five different cakes and a groom’s cake.”

Schoonmaker built the cakes, along with a groom’s cake, over the weekend and shipped them on Monday, and she will assemble them today before tomorrow’s live taping of the show.

“It’s kind of funny because it’s not the way we usually bake cakes, but we specialize in recipes that actually taste better the next day, so it’ll work out fine,” she said.

This isn’t the first time Schoonmaker has been asked to build a cake for a nationally televised show. Last year she provided the wedding cake for NBC’s reality show, “Race to the Altar.”

“That was completely different — that was one cake, shipped to L.A.,” Schoonmaker explained. Not five — six, counting the groom’s cake — like she’s doing this time.

“My cakes will appear live; I don’t know if I will,” she said. “TV is fickle that way.” The editor from Modern Bride is doing the cake segment of the five-day series.

This week’s gig on national television grew from a call Schoonmaker received several years ago from Jessica Herzberg at CBS, requesting a press kit. She had either been to the Web site or seen Polly’s Cakes in a magazine.

(Her cakes have appeared in Conde Nast’s Bride’s Magazine, Food & Wine, Pastry Art and Design, and Vogue, and Schoonmaker herself has appeared on the NBC Today Show.)

“Then four years later — I hear from her,” Schoonmaker laughed. “She said, ‘I think I have the perfect thing for you!’”

It has been exciting, but also a lot of hard work and more than the usual amount of pressure.

“It’s been fun, but we can’t wait for a little bit quieter week, next week,” she said. “Not that it will last.”